Comments on: Rustbelt collapse dividend: ginormous Chrysler plant and 3,000,000 sqft worth of gear up for salehttp://boingboing.net/2010/01/14/rustbelt-collapse-di.html
Brain candy for Happy MutantsMon, 30 Mar 2015 20:24:05 +0000hourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.1By: Lesterhttp://boingboing.net/2010/01/14/rustbelt-collapse-di.html#comment-687392
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-687392UDel’s already got plans for the space, which is located right across the street from their ag school and stadium. It’ll be a biomedical research campus, with some engineering school facilities as well, I’ve heard.

I wonder how much those robot arms are going for…and why the engineering school didn’t just snatch them up.

Go blue hens!

]]>By: Anonymoushttp://boingboing.net/2010/01/14/rustbelt-collapse-di.html#comment-687401
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-687401Thanks for the heads up.
I, (as well as most of Delaware), have been aware that UD was buying out the big Chrysler plant to use for composites, but I hadn’t seen a complete item listing for the plant before.

And to set aside any worries, there ARE Makers in Delaware. Most of us are actually students at UD.

Why GM won’t use these plants to manufacture high speed railway liner or passenger train cars is beyond me.

GM isn’t in the rolling stock business. If you’re thinking of EMD, it was sold off in 2005.

]]>By: xy9inehttp://boingboing.net/2010/01/14/rustbelt-collapse-di.html#comment-687687
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-687687ahh, what mark pauline (aka survival research labs) could do with all this hardware. a colossal mechanized self destructing homage to the us auto industry would be SO apropos.

]]>By: elvisliveshttp://boingboing.net/2010/01/14/rustbelt-collapse-di.html#comment-687436
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-687436Why GM won’t use these plants to manufacture high speed railway liner or passenger train cars is beyond me. Sure it would cost money to re-whatever a plant to manufacture trains instead of SUV’s, but what if the Rust Belt helped steer the country AWAY from reliance on the automobile. Is poetic justice the right word to describe that?
]]>By: greengestalthttp://boingboing.net/2010/01/14/rustbelt-collapse-di.html#comment-687462
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-687462The Mad Scientist fantasy is a good one, but sadly too optomistic. Those things aren’t part of a “Santa Claus” type factory that while closer to reality only exist in science fiction. The robots did little other than exact, repetitive motions to replace workers. Any Mad Scientist who had the resources to buy such a factory would have already spent the money on a lesser amount of more modern and more versatile equipment for their “Kill-Bot Army” though they’d be red with anger at China driving up the “Scrap Metal” costs.

The reality is, it’s a sickening waste and the by product of the rich elite war to destroy the middle class it is winning hands down. If America had reasonable trade barriers, tariffs, to protect it’s own economy… Like EVERY other country in the world, especially China… It’d be a lot more practical to make cars here and sell them here. Instead we’ve had decades of jobs being lost our ‘outsourced’ as rich elite sat on their piles of wealth and managed “Multi story Outhouse” style.

This is many billion dollars, wasted. Not illusion here. So what if the money was in ‘private hands’ and part of their ‘business decision’, they wasted billions. They should be punished for that alone.

Why not have ex-employees buy (or better yet seize) the plant and reopen it under workers self management?

Factory workers could do a much better job running a successful company than the bosses, lawyers, private equity vultures, and etc thieves that drove Chrysler into the ground.

]]>By: Capissenhttp://boingboing.net/2010/01/14/rustbelt-collapse-di.html#comment-687726
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-687726“Oh to be an independently wealthy mad scientist with a large laboratory, perhaps under an extinct volcano”

This mad scientist is going to stick to his original plan to hack a bunch of automated machining centers to do his bidding. MWAHAHAHAHA!

]]>By: elsuperjeffehttp://boingboing.net/2010/01/14/rustbelt-collapse-di.html#comment-687298
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-687298wonder if there’s a turbo encabulator in there?
]]>By: Brainsporehttp://boingboing.net/2010/01/14/rustbelt-collapse-di.html#comment-687305
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-687305Calculon?
]]>By: Anonymoushttp://boingboing.net/2010/01/14/rustbelt-collapse-di.html#comment-687308
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-687308Dibs on the Oscillation Overthruster!
]]>By: Anonymoushttp://boingboing.net/2010/01/14/rustbelt-collapse-di.html#comment-687564
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-687564we should program them all to dismantle themselves/each other! That would be cool to watch
]]>By: Stefan Joneshttp://boingboing.net/2010/01/14/rustbelt-collapse-di.html#comment-687314
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-687314This could be turned into the biggest TechShop in the world!
]]>By: KnoxHarringtonhttp://boingboing.net/2010/01/14/rustbelt-collapse-di.html#comment-687323
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-687323You mean when companies go out of business their capital gets reallocated to other productive uses? Schumpeter’s Ghost! That’s amazing!
]]>By: Snighttp://boingboing.net/2010/01/14/rustbelt-collapse-di.html#comment-687327
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-687327Indoor theme park. Delaware-Disney. You’ve already got the conveyor belt and robots. Or a huge lasertag gym.
]]>By: cinemajayhttp://boingboing.net/2010/01/14/rustbelt-collapse-di.html#comment-687333
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-687333And here Saturn and Saab needed a place to continue their manufacturing–I guess this wasn’t an option.
]]>By: efergus3http://boingboing.net/2010/01/14/rustbelt-collapse-di.html#comment-687334
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-687334Bwa ha ha ha ha! I’ve been looking for somewhere to build a robot army to conquer the world. You wouldn’t believe what GM wants to charge me.
]]>By: KnoxHarringtonhttp://boingboing.net/2010/01/14/rustbelt-collapse-di.html#comment-687355
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-687355cinemajay, it most certainly was an option, but it probably wasn’t a very good one. The cost of retooling the plant to build Saabs or Saturns has got to run close to $1B, especially when you consider it is currently set up to build large SUVs with Chrysler parts and processes, and you’d need it to make mostly sedans with GM parts and processes. All that to continue building two lines of cars that are rarely profitable to begin with.
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